Sylph Etherege

ON
a bright summer evening, two persons stood among
the shrubbery of a garden, stealthily watching
a young girl, who sat in the window-seat of a
neighbouring mansion. One of these unseen
observers, a gentleman, was youthful, and had an
air of high breeding and refinement, and a face
marked with intellect, though otherwise of
unprepossessing aspect. His features wore even an
ominous, though somewhat mirthful expression,
while he pointed his long forefinger at the girl,
and seemed to regard her as a creature completely
within the scope of his influence.

"Do you
know, Edward Hamilton,--since so you choose
to be named,--do you know," said the lady beside
him, "that I have almost a mind to break the spell
at once? What if the lesson should prove too
severe! True; if my ward could be thus laughed
out of her fantastic nonsense, she might be the
better for it through life. But then she is such
a delicate creature! And besides, are you not
ruining your own chance, by putting forward this
shadow of a rival?"

"But will
he not vanish into thin air, at my
bidding?" rejoined Edward Hamilton. "Let the
charm work!"

The girl's
slender and sylph-like figure, tinged
with radiance from the sunset clouds, and overhung
with the rich drapery of the silken curtains, and
set within the deep frame of the window, was a
perfect picture; or rather, it was like the
original loveliness in a painter's fancy, from
which the most finished picture is but an
imperfect copy. Though her occupation excited so
much interest in the two spectators, she was
merely gazing at a miniature which she held in her
hand, encased in white satin and red morocco; nor
did there appear to be any other cause for the
smile of mockery and malice with which Hamilton
regarded her.

At this
moment the girl raised her eyes, and,
instead of a lifelike semblance of the miniature,
beheld the ill-omened shape of Edward Hamilton,
who now stepped forth from his concealment in the
shrubbery.

Sylvia Etherege
was an orphan girl, who had spent
her life, till within a few months past, under the
guardianship, and in the secluded dwelling, of an
old bachelor uncle. While yet in her cradle, she
had been the destined bride of a cousin, who was
no less passive in the betrothal than herself.
Their future union had been projected, as the
means of uniting two rich estates, and was
rendered highly expedient, if not indispensable,
by the testamentary dispositions of the parents on
both sides. Edgar Vaughan, the promised
bridegroom, had been bred from infancy in Europe,
and had never seen the beautiful girl, whose heart
he was to claim as his inheritance. But already,
for several years, a correspondence had been kept
up between the cousins, and had produced an
intellectual intimacy, though it could but
imperfectly acquaint them with each other's
character.

Sylvia was
shy, sensitive, and fanciful; and her
guardian's secluded habits had shut her out from
even so much of the world as is generally open to
maidens of her age. She had been left to seek
associates and friends for herself, in the haunts
of imagination, and to converse with them,
sometimes in the language of dead poets, oftener
in the poetry of her own mind. The companion whom
she chiefly summoned up, was the cousin, with
whose idea her earliest thoughts had been
connected. She made a vision of Edgar Vaughan,
and tinted it with stronger hues than a mere
fancy-picture, yet graced it with so many bright
and delicate perfections, that her cousin could
nowhere have encountered so dangerous a rival. To
this shadow she cherished a romantic fidelity.
With its airy presence sitting by her side, or
gliding along her favorite paths, the loneliness
of her young life was blissful; her heart was
satisfied with love, while yet its virgin purity
was untainted by the earthliness that the touch of
a real lover would have left there. Edgar Vaughan
seemed to be conscious of her character; for, in
his letters, he gave her a name that was happily
appropriate to the sensitiveness of her
disposition, the delicate peculiarity of her
manners, and the ethereal beauty both of her mind
and person. Instead of Sylvia, he called her
Sylph,--with the prerogative of a cousin and a
lover,--his dear Sylph Etherege.

When Sylvia
was seventeen her guardian died, and
she passed under the care of Mrs. Grosvenor, a
lady of wealth and fashion, and Sylvia's nearest
relative, though a distant one. While an inmate
of Mrs. Grosvenor's family, she still preserved
somewhat of her life-long habits of seclusion, and
shrank from a too familiar intercourse with those
around her. Still, too, she was faithful to her
cousin, or to the shadow which bore his name.

The time
now drew near, when Edgar Vaughan, whose
education had been completed by an extensive range
of travel, was to revisit the soil of his
nativity. Edward Hamilton, a young gentleman,
who had been Vaughan's companion, both in his
studies and rambles, had already recrossed the
Atlantic, bringing letters to Mrs. Grosvenor and
Sylvia Etherege. These credentials insured him an
earnest welcome, which, however, on Sylvia's part,
was not followed by personal partiality, or even
the regard that seemed due to her cousin's most
intimate friend. As she herself could have
assigned no cause for her repugnance, it might be
termed instinctive. Hamilton's person, it is
true, was the reverse of attractive, especially
when beheld for the first time. Yet, in the eyes
of the most fastidious judges, the defect of
natural grace was compensated by the polish of his
manners, and by the intellect which so often
gleamed through his dark features. Mrs.
Grosvenor, with whom he immediately became a
prodigious favorite, exerted herself to overcome
Sylvia's dislike. But, in this matter, her ward
could neither be reasoned with, nor persuaded.
The presence of Edward Hamilton was sure to render
her cold, shy, and distant, abstracting all the
vivacity from her deportment, as if a cloud had
come betwixt her and the sunshine.

The simplicity
of Sylvia's demeanor rendered it
easy for so keen an observer as Hamilton to detect
her feelings. Whenever any slight circumstance
made him sensible of them, a smile might be seen
to flit over the young man's sallow visage. None,
that had once beheld this smile, were in any
danger of forgetting it; whenever they recalled to
memory the features of Edward Hamilton, they were
always duskily illuminated by this expression of
mockery and malice.

In a
few weeks after Hamilton's arrival, he
presented to Sylvia Etherege a miniature of her
cousin, which, as he informed her, would have been
delivered sooner, but was detained with a portion
of his baggage. This was the miniature, in the
contemplation of which we beheld Sylvia so
absorbed, at the commencement of our story. Such,
in truth, was too often the habit of the shy and
musing girl. The beauty of the pictured
countenance was almost too perfect to represent a
human creature, that had been born of a fallen and
worldworn race, and had lived to manhood amid
ordinary troubles and enjoyments, and must become
wrinkled with age and care. It seemed too bright
for a thing formed of dust, and doomed to crumble
into dust again. Sylvia feared that such a being
would be too refined and delicate to love a simple
girl like her. Yet, even while her spirit drooped
with that apprehension, the picture was but the
masculine counterpart of Sylph Etherege's
sylph-like beauty. There was that resemblance
between her own face and the miniature, which is
said often to exist between lovers whom Heaven has
destined for each other, and which, in this
instance, might be owing to the kindred blood of
the two parties. Sylvia felt, indeed, that there
was something familiar in the countenance, so like
a friend did the eyes smile upon her, and seem to
imply a knowledge of her thoughts. She could
account for this impression only by supposing,
that, in some of her daydreams, imagination had
conjured up the true similitude of her distant and
unseen lover.

But now
could Sylvia give a brighter semblance of
reality to those day-dreams. Clasping the
miniature to her heart, she could summon forth,
from that haunted cell of pure and blissful
fantasies, the life-like shadow, to roam with her
in the moonlight garden. Even at noontide it sat
with her in the arbour, when the sunshine threw
its broken flaecs of gold into the clustering
shade. The effect upon her mind was hardly less
powerful, than if she had actually listened to,
and reciprocated, the vows of Edgar Vaughan; for,
though the illusion never quite deceived her, yet
the remembrance was as distinct as of a remembered
interview. Those heavenly eyes gazed for ever
into her soul, which drank at them as at a fountain,
and was disquieted if reality threw a momentary
cloud between. She heard the melody of a voice
breathing sentiments with which her own chimed in
like music. Oh, happy, yet hapless girl! Thus to
create the being whom she loves, to endow him with
all the attributes that were most fascinating to
her heart, and then to flit with the airy creature
into the realm of fantasy and moonlight, where
dwelt his dreamy kindred! For her lover wiled
Sylvia away from earth, which seemed strange, and
dull, and darksome, and lured her to a country
where her spirit roamed in peaceful rapture,
deeming that it had found its home. Many, in
their youth, have visited that land of dreams, and
wandered so long in its enchanted groves, that,
when banished thence, they feel like exiles
everywhere.

The dark-browed
Edward Hamilton, like the villain
of a tale, would often glide through the romance
wherein poor Sylvia walked. Sometimes, at the
most blissful moment of her ecstasy, when the
features of the miniature were pictured brightest
in the air, they would suddenly change, and
darken, and be transformed into his visage. And
always, when such change occurred, the intrusive
visage wore that peculiar smile, with which
Hamilton had glanced at Sylvia.

Before the
close of summer, it was told Sylvia
Etherege, that Vaughan had arrived from France,
and that she would meet him,--would meet, for the
first time, the loved of years,--that very evening.
We will not tell how often and how earnestly she
gazed upon the miniature, thus endeavouring to
prepare herself for the approaching interview,
lest the throbbing of her timorous heart should
stifle the words of welcome. While the twilight
grew deeper and duskier, she sat with Mrs.
Grosvenor in an inner apartment, lighted only by
the softened gleam from an alabaster lamp, which
was burning at a distance, on the centre-table of
the drawing-room. Never before had Sylph Etherege
looked so sylph-like. She had communed with a
creature of imagination, till her own loveliness
seemed but the creation of a delicate and dreamy
fancy. Every vibration of her spirit was visible
in her frame, as she listened to the rattling of
wheels and the tramp upon the pavement, and deemed
that even the breeze bore the sound of her lover's
footsteps, as if he trode upon the viewless air.
Mrs. Grosvenor, too, while she watched the
tremulous flow of Sylvia's feelings, was deeply
moved; she looked uneasily at the agitated girl,
and was about to speak, when the opening of the
street door arrested the words upon her lips.

Footsteps ascended
the staircase, with a confident
and familiar tread, and some one entered the
drawing-room. From the sofa where they sat, in
the inner apartment, Mrs. Grosvenor and Sylvia
could not discern the visitor.

But instead
of answering, or rising to meet her
lover,--who had greeted her by the sweet and
fanciful name, which, appropriate as it was to her
character, was known only to him,--Sylvia grasped
Mrs. Grosvenor's arm, while her whole frame shook
with the throbbing of her heart.

Before Mrs.
Grosvenor could reply, the stranger
entered the room, bearing the lamp in his hand.
Approaching the sofa, he displayed to Sylvia the
features of Edward Hamilton, illuminated by that
evil smile, from which his face derived so marked
an individuality.

Sylvia shuddered,
but had not power to turn away
her white face from his gaze. The miniature,
which she had been holding in her hand, fell down
upon the floor, where Hamilton, or Vaughan, set
his foot upon it, and crushed the ivory
counterfeit to fragments.

"There, my
sweet Sylph!" he exclaimed. "It was I
that created your phantom-lover, and now I
annihilate him! Your dream is rudely broken.
Awake, Sylph Etherege, awake to truth! I am the
only Edgar Vaughan."

"We have
gone too far, Edgar Vaughan," said Mrs.
Grosvenor, catching Sylvia in her arms. The
revengeful freak, which Vaughan's wounded vanity
had suggested, had been countenanced by this lady,
in the hope of curing Sylvia of her romantic
notions, and reconciling her to the truths and
realities of life. "Look at the poor child!" she
continued. "I protest! I tremble for the
consequences!"

"Indeed, Madam!"
replied Vaughan
sneeringly, as he threw the light of the lamp on
Sylvia's closed eyes and marble features. "Well,
my conscience is clear. I did but look into this
delicate creature's heart; and with the pure
fantasies that I found there, I made what seemed a
man,--and the delusive shadow has wiled her away to
Shadowland, and vanished there! It is no new
tale. Many a sweet maid has shared the lot of
poor Sylph Etherege!"

"And now,
Edgar Vaughan," said Mrs. Grosvenor, as
Sylvia's heart began faintly to throb again, "now
try, in good earnest, to win back her love from
the phantom which you conjured up. If you
succeed, she will be the better her whole life
long, for the lesson we have given her."

Whether the
result of the lesson corresponded with
Mrs. Grosvenor's hopes, may be gathered from the
closing scene of our story. It had been made
known to the fashionable world, that Edgar Vaughan
had returned from France, and, under the assumed
name of Edward Hamilton, had won the affections of
the lovely girl, to whom he had been affianced in
his boyhood. The nuptials were to take place at
an early date. One evening, before the day of
anticipated bliss arrived, Edgar Vaughan entered
Mrs. Grosvenor's drawing-room, where he found
that lady and Sylph Etherege.

"Only that
Sylvia makes no complaint," remarked
Mrs. Grosvenor, "I should apprehend that the town
air is ill suited to her constitution. She was
always, indeed, a delicate creature; but now she
is a mere gossamer. Do but look at her! Did you
ever imagine any thing so fragile?"

Vaughan was
already attentively observing his
mistress, who sat in a shadowy and moonlighted
recess of the room, with her dreamy eyes fixed
steadfastly upon his own. The bough of a tree was
waving before the window, and sometimes enveloped
her in the gloom of its shadow, into which she
seemed to vanish.

"Yes," he
said, to Mrs. Grosvenor. "I can
scarcely deem her 'of the earth, earthy.' No
wonder that I call her Sylph! Methinks she will
fade into the moonlight, which falls upon her
through the window. Or, in the open air, she
might flit away upon the breeze, like a wreath of
mist!" Sylvia's eyes grew yet brighter. She waved
her hand to Edgar Vaughan, with a gesture of
ethereal triumph.

"Farewell!" she
said. "I will neither fade into
the moonlight, nor flit away upon the breeze. Yet
you cannot keep me here!"

There was
something in Sylvia's look and tones,
that startled Mrs. Grosvenor with a terrible
apprehension. But, as she was rushing towards the
girl, Vaughan held her back.

"Stay!" cried
he, with a strange smile of
mockery and anguish. "Can our sweet Sylph be
going to Heaven, to seek the original of the
miniature?"